At the Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics, South Korea is pinning its snowboarding medal hopes on two teenagers in the halfpipe events. Seventeen-year-old Choi Gaon has won three straight FIS World Cup titles, emerging as a top contender, while 19-year-old Lee Chae-un holds a world championship and Youth Olympics golds. Their performances could mark a new chapter for South Korean snowboarding.
South Korea has claimed 79 Winter Olympic medals, but only one from snowboarding—a silver by Lee Sang-ho in the men's parallel giant slalom at PyeongChang 2018. At this month's Milan-Cortina Games, the country is relying on teenagers in the halfpipe to build on that record.
In the women's event, 17-year-old sensation Choi Gaon enters as a medal favorite after three straight FIS World Cup wins. Those victories came without Chloe Kim, the Korean-American who has taken the last two Olympic golds; Kim skipped one event in China, withdrew from another in the US due to injury, and sat out the third in Switzerland after a January torn labrum in her shoulder. A matchup with the Olympic champion, if Kim recovers for a potential third straight gold, would be a highlight—no snowboarder has achieved that feat.
For the men, 19-year-old Lee Chae-un is the top hope. He failed to qualify at his Beijing 2022 debut but has progressed rapidly. At 16, he won the halfpipe world title in March 2023, the youngest male champion ever. In January 2024, he swept golds in halfpipe and slopestyle at the Gangwon Winter Youth Olympics, adding an Asian Winter Games slopestyle gold in February 2025. A March 2025 knee surgery posed a setback, but he is now fit.
Halfpipe competitors execute spins, flips, and grabs on a 22-foot semicylindrical slope, judged on amplitude, difficulty, variety, execution, and progression. Qualification features two runs, with the best score advancing the top 12 to a three-run final; scores range from 0 to 100, averaged after discarding the highest and lowest from six judges. Men's qualification is next Wednesday, final on February 13; women's follows the same Wednesday, final Thursday. All events occur at Livigno Snow Park in the Valtellina Cluster, 250 kilometers northeast of Milan.